Share of Children Living in Food-Insecure Households, by State

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Apr 21, 2016

Explore state-level variation in child exposure to food insecurity over the past decade.

Every year, millions of American children are exposed to food insecurity—that is, during some point in the year their household had difficulty providing enough food for all of their members due to a lack of resources. A fraction of these children are exposed to the more severe condition of very low food security which means that, at times during the year, the food intake of household members was reduced and their normal eating patterns were disrupted because the household lacked money and other resources for food. Children who are exposed to food insecurity and very low food security live in every state in the United States.

The problems of food insecurity and very low food security have become more severe since the Great Recession. Prior to the Great Recession, Mississippi faced the highest percentage of children living in food-insecure households, with 23 percent of children lived in food-insecure households in 2005-07.1 Over the next four years during the Great Recession (2008-11), 22 states had rates of children living in food-insecure households even higher than this. The number of states with more than five percent of children living in households with very low food security more than tripled during the Great Recession.

After peaking during the Great Recession, most states have seen a subsequent decline in the rate of children living in households with food insecurity or very low food security, but the rates persist at higher levels than before the recession. From the pre-recession period of 2005-2007 to after the recession in 2012-14, the rate of children living in food-insecure households has increased in 44 states. In over half of the states plus the District of Columbia, at least one in five children lived in a food-insecure household in 2012-14. Over this same time period, at least five percent of children lived in households that reported very low food security in 42 states.

Nationwide, over 15 million children lived in food-insecure households in 2014 (USDA 2014). The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP; formerly called the Food Stamp Program), operated by the US Department of Agriculture, is the largest federal program aimed at reducing food insecurity. SNAP offers nutrition assistance for eligible low-income households and has lifted millions of people out of poverty. To learn more, see THP’s Twelve Facts About Food Insecurity and SNAP.

1 We pool rates of food insecurity and very low food security across adjacent years due to small sample sizes.